Captain must be positive with his tactics in this new era and send message
that his team are ready to regain the No 1 spot - but why select Matt
Prior over Jos Buttler?

The Ashes whitewash is over, big-name players have moved on and this week I am excited to see the new brand of cricket Alastair Cook wants to play.

I hope Cook has realised he has to own his own team, and that this is not Peter Moores’s team. His job is to get everyone ready to play for Cook and England.

This is Cook’s team and I hope he demanded from the selectors they picked players with the traits to produce the brand of cricket he wants to play under his leadership. England’s style of play will be a reflection of Cook’s mindset and outlook.

He should have been smashing his fist on the table and saying this is the way we are going to play. After a 5-0 hammering you want England to come out this week and be really aggressive, send a message to Sri Lanka and the world that his team are ready to regain the No 1 spot.

If Cook wants to stay boring and be the same old England by bowling wide of off stump and trying to build up pressure slowly then he has chosen the wrong path. It was proved in Australia that it is an approach which does not work and it will be fascinating to see if they have learnt from losing the Ashes 5-0. Test cricket has evolved rapidly and Cook must sense the moment.

With that in mind, I find it really surprising they have gone back to Matt Prior. When you are restructuring the team why pick Prior and not Jos Buttler? He has just shown how dangerous he is with the bat with a brilliant one-day hundred so stick with him while he is on a roll.

Going back to Prior I really believe is a backward step. This is the time for new beginnings. If you are going to rebuild the team then the keeper is vital because he sets the tone and standards in the field. England dropped him for a reason. He was not doing the job properly. He has only kept in one first-class match before this Test, I hope this is not a teacher’s, or should I say coach’s pet selection.

Buttler gives that extra dimension with his batting. Prior might be slightly better behind the stumps but it is not as if England have picked two front-line spinners and the keeper will have to stand up all day. Instead, they have picked a part-time off-spinner.

I played for Australia when Adam Gilchrist first came in to the side. He was not a complete keeper then, but he improved and everyone wanted a Gilchrist in their team, and why wouldn’t you, because of his brilliant batting at seven.

He worked his butt off to be the best keeper possible, and it came with experience. Gilly revolutionised the batsman/keeper role and now every team wants that kind of player. Well, Buttler could be your man so give him a go.

Prior has been a fantastic cricketer for England. But because of his Achilles injury he comes into the Test with hardly any form behind him. He needs to go back to county cricket, score hundreds, keep well, and prove to everyone he is still hungry. It should be a case that Buttler needs to mess up in order to lose his England place, not the other way round. Buttler should not be going back to county cricket.

I think that it is a Moores call, the old Sussex connection with Prior. I think it is, as I said, a teacher’s pet selection and Buttler has been hard done by.

Moores has to win respect in his new job. Telling Prior to earn his stripes back would have been a perfect way of doing it.

England have rebuilding work to do and it will naturally take time to replace the wonderful Graeme Swann. He jumped from a sinking ship in Australia and should have finished that series off but we should still respect him for what he achieved.

The fact England have picked a part-timer in Moeen Ali shows the hole Swann has left behind. If you are a young spinner in England it is time to put your hand up because there is a spot waiting for you.

I will be here for the next 10 weeks and I will be keeping a close eye on the spinners in county cricket to see who is out there. Even batters who bowl a bit of spin, such as Moeen, have got a chance too.

Moeen has, by sheer weight of county runs for Worcestershire and bowling a few overs of spin, earned a Test cap without being a front-line spinner so all those bits-and-pieces cricketers should get down to the nets and start bowling for hours every day because they could get a Test cap for England.

All county front-line spinners should not take the selection of Moeen to heart either. They just have to show the selectors what they have got and demand selection by pure performance.

England have to find someone who does a good job for what they need, which either means being accurate or someone who rips it big, can take five wickets and win a game but might get smashed.

This is where Cook needs to decide on the traits he wants and hopefully he goes for match winners with character.

Jos Buttler pushed his puck. I would have run him out earlier

I am only going on what Mahela Jayawardene said after the one-day series but he stated England pinched 24 twos in the last 10 overs of the game at Lord’s when Jos Buttler was batting. He claimed they identified Buttler had been backing up a bit early and then gave him a warning in the next match.

I am sorry mate but that means you are out. I have no issue with what Sachitra Senanayake did whatsoever.

If it had been a one-off, with no warning, then you would ask serious questions about Sri Lanka. But 24 twos at Lord’s? It is a small ground and I smell a rat. Either it was very poor fielding or he was backing up too far.

For the actual dismissal Buttler was barely out of his ground. But when you put it into context, rather than jump up and down and scream about the Spirit of Cricket, then I would have done it a lot earlier.

I would have run him out after four or five twos and not waited until the next match.

But it has added spice to the series and hands England the motivation to attack Sri Lanka verbally and set the tone for the summer.